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Mexican pepper varieties by state?

j.t.delaney

j.t.delaney

Hi there,

Does any body know of a resource for finding pepper varieties from Mexico by state? There are a lot of varieties out there associated with Yucatan and Oaxaca , but when I look for Chiapas, I get nothing. There must be this information out there. Any advice?
 
I'm still looking to see what's out there. Seedbanks like CGN and GRIN are surprisingly limited in detail. i did come across this article, which is interesting; http://dx.doi.org/10.3732/ajb.0800155/ There's a cool map showing the genetic diversity 9as measured by haplotype) of C. annuum within Mexico. Very cool, but still not the Mesoamerican pepper database of my dreams. I will keep searching.
 
For a country that seems to use peppers for many different dishes with great diversity, the published data is very little. Willard could probably provide more insight on this. I haven't seen him post much lately though.

Chris
 
Chiles available in Mejico follow most closely market rules, ie, If they are for sale, people have to want them.

In the Bajio, you find approximately the same chiles you find in Nuevo Leon, Chihuahua and Durango and etc.
Other than habañeros, there are no superhots for sale.
Oaxaca, Michoacan, Chiapas and etc all have favorite local chiles that include state/municipality name but appear to be local adaptations of other common varieties.
In the Yucutan and lowland areas, habañeros are readily available which they are not in the Bajio.
Chipotles are a whole different subject.
I think this is like any other market, that is, you get what grows best near where you are.

The only ubiquitous chile in all markets in which I have been are chilacas, poblanos, serranos, arboles, Xalapas and manzanos.

In the Bajio:

IMG_3146.jpg
 
Update:

I found a couple resources that are looking a little more promising, but still not quite there. I'm beginning to have the sinking feeling that something like this doesn't exist. One thing which I think folks here will enjoy is a search engine by EURISCO, which is an international effort to make the catalogs of various national inventories searchable. Here's a link. The problem, as you can probably already guess, is that it's focus is on European national germplasm inventories. While there are lots of nice European varieties that have developed, the vast majority of Capsicum's genetic diversity is completely ignored. I guess they had to start somewhere, and with a little luck, they will eventually expand this effort to include the rest of the world.

The other interesting thing I found, which also gives me a little hope, is an excel spreadsheet put together as part of a United Nations project for World Information and Early Warning System of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (WIEWS). It is a list of the major seed and germplasm banks around the world, as well as other people working on crop development as part of food security. Here's a link to that. In case that link doesn't work, here's the url: http://ancillary.grinfo.net/FAO-WIEWS-Institutes.xls This is an amazing, if not overwhelming, list. Looking through the listed contributors from the Americas, there is a lot of potential for further research.
 
J.T.---I would definitely listen to Willard....he IS in Mexico
 
AlabamaJack said:
J.T.---I would definitely listen to Willard....he IS in Mexico
Click to expand...

I have listened to Willard -- he's a great source for a lot of info. Unfortunately, the question remains: is there a list of varieties of peppers from Mexico, within information on which states they came from? It turns out, this doesn't look like can be answered easily. It would be nice to have a straighforward "Yes, and you can find this all at X", or even something like, "No, I've done a thorough search of X, Y, and Z, and it just doesn't look like it." But actually, neither of those two answers would be honest or accurate. There are around two hundred listed with a Mexican origin by www.thechileman,org alone, which is a helluva lot more than can be found at the CGN. The USDA's GRIN/NPGS system gives a whole lot more results (around 905) for varieties of Capsicum having something to do with 'Mexico', but most of these are from New Mexico (not the old one), and no strong effort was made to sort them by state, anyways. This latter number makes a lot more sense for the region where peppers have been grown and eaten for 7500 years. The problem is that this level of detail still isn't all that satisfying; local peppers in the remote highlands of Oaxaca and Chiapas aren't going to reflect what's growing in the lush tropics of Quintana Roo or Yucatan, let alone the much drier states of Chihuaha or Sonora. Yes, there will be some that will be more prevalent, but it's the local ones I'm after, and for that, you need a national inventory of some sort.

Another source might be National Vegetable Germplasm Bank, Mexico (BANGEV, UACH), since these guys would undoubtedly have much of the actual materials cataloged, but I haven't been able to navigate them well enough to find a list (I'm getting better at Spanish, but it's still a distant fourth language.)

Any ideas?
 
I think you are finding out what others have found out that get interested in chile taxonomy, what there is sucks.

The USDA is as complete/informative as any. The taxonomy of Mexican chiles sucks worse than the USDA. Given that chiles are so prone to cross-fertilization, the information developed may only be appropriate to a given locale where the chile is grown. The cross is only grown locally and has a local name. The USDA has no way to confirm information on the species, only what is given when the seed is submitted to them and Mejican chile growers are not that hip on taxonomy in general.

I know this is true of many varieties with State names, for instance, Oaxaca pasilla. The Oaxaca pasilla is, from what I have seen, just a chilaca grown and dried in Oaxaca. Chile seco, a common name in the Yucatan, is a dried Xalapa and not chipotle. Mejican chile growers are very proprietary of their local chiles and getting them to cough up taxonomic information is beating your head against the wall.

There is also the same problem in Mejico that there is here, growers give their chile a name that will help market it and are quite prone to made-up names that don't relate to species.
 
Thanks, willard3!

That's the tricky thing about what is really definable as a "variety"; every variety itself represents a statistical function of genetic variability. Where do you set limits, particularly when you're dealing with large, multivariate, overlapping distributions? I'm not a proper biologist, but I'm eager to learn more.

In the meantime, I came across a couple salient articles that i thought folks would enjoy.
Genetic Diversity of Chile (Capsicum Annuum Var. Annuum L.) Landraces from Northern New Mexico, Colorado, and Mexico

AFLP assessment of genetic diversity of Capsicum genetic resources in Guatemala: home gardens as an option for conservation


In the Guatemalan study, they actually do map out the locations of the aquisitions, and compare to see how well they relate to others. Guatemala arguably represents just as much Capsicum diversity per unit of land area as anywhere in Mexico, so it's an interesting proof-of-concept that could be applied more broadly in its neighbor to the north.
 
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